Tag: George Romero

Mad Max roars back to the cinema this week, with the kind of high-budget epic that’s far removed from its budget-constrained, gritty beginnings. Although if anything, Max madder than he ever. Simultaneously complex, mysterious and furiously simple – a look back at the franchise built around a man’s mental collapse. First Up, a (spoiler-filled) look at the 1979 original and those essential Mad Max Factors.

“You don’t want to make Max mad,
Because when Max gets mad,
He gets even”

WHAT IS IT ABOUT GEORGES AND THEIR FRANCHISES? George Romero has his brilliant Dead trilogy, now of two parts after expand it in the last decade with a looser follow-up trilogy. Then of course, main beard George Lucas saw the turn of the century as the perfect time to expand his original Star Wars trilogy. Being very kind, neither of those extensions matched the heights of the originals. So it’s left to one other George to right the record. And as Australian visionary George Miller heads back to his Mad Max franchise 30 years on, he’s certainly not running on empty.

All those original ‘George Trilogies’ ended between 1983 and 1985, and while Max’s return comes later, having escaped a great deal of production, it stands a good chance of writing a wrong. To fulfil the franchise’s potential as one of Hollywood’s major properties. Miller always had higher blockbuster ambitions for his main work, last seen limping slightly from Hollywood in 1985. Amassing awards for other films, from drama to animation, he’s certainly not lost the passion for his first cinematic son.

The Originals

Every film has a different flavour

So what of that original trilogy? It’s an incredibly varied work, released over six years but crossing 20 years of narrative chronology. It hardly sits unique in the genre of Australian road movie, but it’s surprisingly un-repetitive. Maybe it’s tracking the disintegration of humanity, maybe through time passed or distance made from an apocalypse. But really it’s about the destruction of one man. The first film took its time defining and then breaking a legend in waiting who would haunt the next two films like a ghost as the world found new ways to fall around him. If there’s redemption on offer he falls on it by mistake and never sees it to fruition. It’s astonishing that the first film is dedicated to Max’s origin, but more so that once he’s created and voyages further into the dark heart of dystopia he’s resolutely fixed. It’s a study of a man who has everything taken away, and becomes a single stable point in a new world that’s often bustling either for hope, anarchy or a new capitalism. But it’s open to interpretation. He’s an anti-hero, but no longer either the good man he professes to be in the first part nor a villain, despite his clear homicidal criminality at the end of that same film. Perhaps not so much a good man than a broken man in waiting; a fragile personality that simply can’t accept change or loss.